SHE TOLD HIM he was the little
girl's father, and he believed her. So when the state asked him to acknowledge
his paternity, he went in and signed the paper they put before him. Though
scarcely more than a child himself, he understood that good men don't walk away
from their children, so he paid the child support asked of him without grumbling
- 27 percent of every paycheck, right off the top. He visited ''Cheryl''
regularly, played with her, bonded with her. He loved his daughter and tried to
be a good father.

Oh, he knew what people said. Two of the mother's friends told
him that Cheryl wasn't his. Some people, observing that his daughter didn't
resemble him, hinted that he was being played for a fool. But he figured the
people who talked like that were just trying to bust his chops, or were having a
fight with the mother, or didn't know what they were talking about. Maybe, down
deep, he suspected they might be right but couldn't bring himself to confront
the mother over it. Maybe, as people often do, he simply lived with an awkward
situation until it became unbearable.

Maybe he couldn't bear the thought of
losing his little girl.

And so it wasn't until 1999, when Cheryl was 5, that he
finally took her for a DNA test. When it confirmed that he wasn't her father, he
asked to be released from child support. Now that the truth was known, he
argued, it wouldn't be fair to keep making him pay for another man's child.

Last
week the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court gave him its answer: Shut up and
keep paying.

''The law places on men the burden to consider carefully the
permanent consequences that flow from an acknowledgment of paternity,'' the
court held. ''He waited too long to challenge his paternity.''

And what burden,
you might wonder, does the law place on women? A burden to tell the truth when
asked to identify a child's father? A burden not to trick a young man into
forfeiting tens of thousands of dollars that he doesn't owe? A burden not to
deceive the courts?

Nope, none of the above. To judge from the court's opinion,
a woman like Cheryl's mother is under no obligation at all. The justices who
decided this case say nothing - not one word - about her dishonesty or the
immense hardship she has inflicted on an innocent man. There is no hint that
they disapprove of a woman who bears a child out of wedlock, then falsely names
a former boyfriend as the father so she can go on welfare.

She may have been the
liar, the court seems to believe, but he is the one who is guilty - guilty of
not seizing the ''opportunity to undergo genetic testing before he acknowledged
paternity'' and of not having ''promptly challenged the paternity judgment''
once he suspected he might not be Cheryl's real father. Never mind that he was
only 18 at the time, a kid just out of high school. Never mind that he didn't
have a lawyer or realize he needed one. Never mind that he wouldn't have known
what the offer of ''genetic marker testing'' meant even if he had noticed that
phrase in the fine print of the legal documents he agreed to sign.

None of that
gives the justices pause because they are focused on something else.

His money.

We may not be able to force this guy to go on pretending he is Cheryl's father,
says the court, ''but we can protect her financial security.'' He may no longer
feel the same affection for her, but ''we can ensure that Cheryl ... is not also
deprived of the legal rights and financial benefits of a parental
relationship.'' In short, it's OK to keep ripping him off because she needs the
money.

He works in a restaurant and makes $21,000 a year, more than half of
which is deducted to pay child support and taxes. He has already shelled out
$25,000 to support a child he didn't father and can expect to hand over another
$50,000 before she turns 18 - and perhaps pay for her college education after
that. He is so financially straitened that he cannot afford to move out of his
parents' house.

But the swindle must go on, says the court, because someone else
needs his money. In the court's view, he is not a wronged man with a compelling
plea for relief. He is an ATM machine.

The court justifies this dreadful ruling
by noting that ''numerous other courts'' - in Vermont, Florida, and Maryland,
for example - have done the same thing. It's true; they have. The problem has
gotten so bad that a group of men have formed Citizens Against Paternity Fraud
to press for relief in the state legislatures. [Web address: http://www.jps.net/mrcas/1man.htm
]

But how the mighty are fallen. There was a time when the Massachusetts Supreme
Judicial Court was renowned for its legal brilliance, when it was the court
other courts relied on in abandoning unworthy precedents. Today it is a
follower, not a leader, hiding behind unjust decisions elsewhere to rationalize
injustice of its own.

Note:
If this woman knew this man was not the father then this is
FRAUD! The only real solution to this is for each person, the
man and woman to follow BIBLICAL principals. This include waiting until
marriage to engage in sexual relations and then ONLY with each other. This
would eliminate almost all the heartache this causes. The one that
often suffers the most are our children.